New Phoenix Strike Strategy

[Telemont]

I found the Basin through the Lounge, so I had to post a shameless link to some mild discoveries in Phoenix Strike! :ph34r:

The Amazon Basin / Assassin Room

[the Langolier]

When talking about the style that has high mana, how exactly do you plan to release the charges? With a full globe, following attackes would simply increase the charge. Regenerating 2 mana per attack would just mean the charges wouldn't cost any mana.

If you plan on draining the globe before each fight, that is an aweful waste of mana, especially when you need to get your pool to ~500 mana to get that rate of regeneration needed. Don't forget that you will also need to *spend* that mana before each fight, which is easily 4-5 castings of traps or 2-3 castings of the master between battles. IMO, with the number of items needed to get 500 mana without any energy points is too great a cost than keeping low mana and getting a single item with 2% mana leech.

[Baajikiil]

It is an interesting tweaker concept, and I've seen similiar situations:

When fighting phys immune leaders and using up all my mana, my MA assassin commonly left PS as her atack, letting meteors go every 3-4 attacks.

Also this came up often when fighting mana burn monsters. My attack were fast enough to usually hit once, gaining mana, hit again charging PS, and then get mana burned and release with the next attack.

I'd be quite interested in seeing a table of mana totals for gaining a consistant release of chain lighting for different attack rates. Chain lightning seems to be the best crowd killer out of the 3 affects(though chaos ice bolt is perhaps better to stay alive, and meteor is best vs single oponents).

Heh, I'm not interested enough to do the testing myself though :)

[Telemont]

When talking about the style that has high mana, how exactly do you plan to release the charges?  With a full globe, following attackes would simply increase the charge.  Regenerating 2 mana per attack would just mean the charges wouldn't cost any mana.

If you plan on draining the globe before each fight, that is an aweful waste of mana, especially when you need to get your pool to ~500 mana to get that rate of regeneration needed.  Don't forget that you will also need to *spend* that mana before each fight, which is easily 4-5 castings of traps or 2-3 castings of the master between battles.  IMO, with the number of items needed to get 500 mana without any energy points is too great a cost than keeping low mana and getting a single item with 2% mana leech.

The charge cost of Phoenix Strike is 4. With an virtually empty mana pool this means that your attacks charge up on the first strike, and revert to normal attack on the second strike with a regeneration of 2 per swing. The first thing you should do when you step into a battleground is to take a few necessary seconds to empty your mana pool with spam Burst of Speed, Death Sentry, Shadow Warrior or Shadow Master.

As for your regeneration at 500ish mana: it's quick, but it's not that quick. A cursory dropping of 2-3 death sentries for big fights with a high IAS only takes a moment, and it benefits you directly. Otherwise simply attacking creates the useful anomoly (that was mentioned) of your first attack launching Chaos Ice and allowing time for the meteors to drop. Though, yes, the Item Requirements are the trade off to the Low Leech varient.

My personal choice was Shadow Warrior for the first build, though it would have been better suited to the second. There's not much more I love when returning from the local Act healer to set off a Shadow Bomb or six :D They do do a bit of damage when they die, not enough to matter, but it's fun!

[Saga_Keeper]

All it does is save your fingers some work, charge 2 and 3 are important for crowd control anyways if this is a primary attack, and lots of stuff is resistant or immune to fire later on.
-Saga